Altcoins This Week: HSBC Looking Into Cryptos, US Congressman Calls For Ban On Cryptos And More

Today on Altcoins This Week we discuss HSBC’s interest for cryptocurrencies, we comment on the latest remarks by the US Congressman Brad Sherman calling for a ban on cryptos and more.

Huobi Takes To The Cloud To Deliver Exchange Options

The third largest crypto exchange Huobi, has announced plans to deliver a cloud-based system to assist business partners in developing their own digital currency exchanges. The Asian exchange giant made the announcement the same week that it unveiled its Blockchain Plus Industry Alliance, which hopes to bring together blockchain experts from around the world to share resources free of charge.

These generous moves are geared towards sharing Huobi’s expertise in the field, with the platform developing an investment fund to be used to raise capital for startups in China and South Korea. Huobi said in its announcement that these platforms are part of its determination to share “the research capability, technical capability and Blockchain Plus practical experience accumulated by Huobi Group over the past five years”.

Sun Rises To Tron Election Challenge

Tron founder Justin Sun has been elected as a “superdelegate” just a day after announcing his candidacy for the role. Superdelegates play a function in the Tron ecosystem similar to Bitcoin Miners, validating transactions for a reward and securing and expanding the Blockchain. However, Sun has stated that he will operate as an individual, rather than as the head of the Tron Foundation, the block that owns 34 billion TRX tokens.

Tron is in the process of migrating from the Ethereum network to its own blockchain and Sun’s decision to run for election to one of only 27 Superdelegate posts, was met with criticism from those who see it as placing too much power in the hands of the Tron Foundation, an accusation that Sun denies. Indeed, Sun’s actions were, in his own words, designed to “contribute to the establishment of a truly democratic, decentralized Tron community.” It remains to be seen if critics of the platform will be pleased with the direction the project takes going forward.

HSBC “Cautiously Looking at Crypto Investments”

One of the world’s largest banks, HSBC, has stated that it is “cautiously looking at crypto investments” but the crypto market is still too volatile for it to actively pursue them at the present time. A move by a major bank would be seen as setting the groundwork for the next phase in the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies but, while banks including HSBC have shown increasing interest in blockchain technology, there has yet to be any serious movement towards its adoption.

HSBC’s tone, when asked by Forbes about cryptocurrencies, was conciliatory, and will give hope to some, although Global Head of Digital Josh Bottomley was keen to discriminate between token systems wherein the token serves a particular purpose, and coins or token speculation for its own sake, saying the latter didn’t interest HSBC.

US Congressman Feels Wrath of Twitter Over Ban Cryptos Remarks

US Congressman Brad Sherman doesn’t like cryptocurrencies. He has called, not for the first time in the US Congress, for a blanket ban on the mining or holding of cryptos for any purpose in exchanges. His comments were met with derision from pro-crypto Twitter users who called his comments, to put it politely, ill-informed. Angry tweets about Sherman’s connections to a credit card payments firm, which was his largest donor in the last election, followed with users accusing the Congressman of hypocrisy and self-interest.

Sherman has been here before, having previously said that cryptocurrencies are only used by criminal gangs for money laundering. He has yet to answer his critics, but with the hashtag “unseat Sherman” trending after the comments became public, this is probably not the last we will hear from the Californian Congressman on this issue.

Altcoins Holding Steady

Ethereum (ETH) has fallen back slightly since hitting $500 midweek. It opened at $480 on Thursday but had fallen back to $450 by close on Friday. A slight return followed, with the value returning to $460 by Sunday. XRP followed similar lines, opening at $0.487 on Thursday before receding to close at $0.44 on Friday. It too saw its fortunes change slightly to see out Sunday trading at $0.46. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) opened Thursday at $828 but slipped below $800 on Friday to hit a low of $750 on Saturday. But it was back up again on Sunday, trading at $810. EOS opened on Thursday at $8.58 but lost ground to close Friday at $7.90, before clawing back to $8.13 on Sunday. Stellar continues to perform strongly, opening on Thursday at $0.29 and making $0.30 on Friday, before returning to $0.29 on Sunday.

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